


Death-Defying

by keerawa



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Community: ds_harlequin, M/M, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 1.5-2 Hours, Repod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-06
Updated: 2008-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 15:56:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser is a contract-killer, and Detective Ray Kowalski needs to stop him before he kills again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge: Written for the [](http://ds-harlequin.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://ds-harlequin.livejournal.com/)**ds_harlequin** prompt #12.  
>  **Warnings:** AU, minor character death, m/m sexuality, disturbing ideas, mention of dubious-consent sexual relationship with a minor.  
>  **Betas:** Thanks to [](http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/profile)[**nos4a2no9**](http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/) and [](http://panther-kitten.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://panther-kitten.livejournal.com/)**panther_kitten** for helping me find my way to the heart of this story.  
>  **Disclaimers:** due South, Fraser and Ray Kowalski belong to Alliance. I'm just rearranging the sandbox a little. Thanks to Robert Service and Rudyard Kipling for the use of the first and last stanzas of "Call of the Wild" and "The Thousandth Man".  
>  **ETA** : [](http://podfic-lover.livejournal.com/profile)[**podfic_lover**](http://podfic-lover.livejournal.com/) has now recorded a nuanced podfic of "Death-Defying". Download the mp3 version [here](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/death-defying) or the audiobook version [here](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/death-defying-audiobook).  
>  **ETA2:** The esteemed and talented artist [](http://katekat1010.livejournal.com/profile)[**katekat1010**](http://katekat1010.livejournal.com/) created [two gorgeous movie posters](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/75903.html) for Death-Defying.  
>  **ETA 3:** Luzula has performed a fantastic repod of Death-Defying! Download it from [Amplification](http://amplificathon.dreamwidth.org/1959810.html) or the [Audiofic Archive](http://www.audiofic.jinjurly.com/death-defying-0).

"You worried this tip won't pan out, Kowalski?" my partner Douglas asked as we pulled off the highway, towards the port. A line of marked and unmarked police vehicles followed us; the headlights made us look like a funeral procession in the gray light just before dawn.

This week, every street-level contact I had lit up like Tilt on a pinball machine. They all said Ben Fraser was coming to Chicago to settle a score. He'd be here in three days – no, next week – no, he was already here, hiding out in Chinatown.

"Nah, Lennie's my best snitch," I told Douglas. "He's the one that gave us Myrabo. If Lennie says Fraser's getting into town on a freighter this morning, he'll be here."

"Then why so down? This collar'll be one hell of a feather in your cap," Douglas said.

He was always worried about making a good impression on the boys upstairs. Me, I keep my head down and close my cases as best I can. But it pissed me off that Douglas couldn't let me be, just this once.

"Look, we're bringing in _Ben Fraser_ ," I told him. "The guy's a legend."

"Twenty-nine contract kills in seven countries? More like a nightmare, if you ask me."

"Yeah, but no civilians, no women, no children," I reminded Douglas, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. "Just the baddest of the bad - drug lords, mafioso, perps the cops could never touch. Remember that Colombian, Escobar, the one who started cutting out the tongues of the villagers so they couldn't tell anybody his business? Ben Fraser took him out in the middle of his own private army."

They showed the local church on the news, lit full of candles, people crying, calling Fraser a hero.

Douglas loves to get in my face and argue about stuff. "No civilians we know of, but what about that cop in Istanbul? He - "

"Come on," I interrupted, "he was dirty as they come, practically a bodyguard for the bad guy."

"So? That only proves coming between Fraser and his target isn't the safest thing."

Which, since that's exactly what we were about to do, shut us both up for a minute. That's Douglas for you. Open mouth, insert foot.

"You just need to get laid," he muttered as I pulled into the lot next to the pier. I didn't bother answering, since it was true, and Douglas knew it. I'd even tried picking up a girl at a bar last night. She got one look at my place and suddenly had to get home to feed her cat.

A choppy wind off the lake welcomed us with the stink of dead fish and motor oil as we got out of the car. The freighter, the _Argosy_ , was due into port in two hours, plenty of time to get into position. I gave a few last minute instructions.

Douglas was in charge of making sure all the port personnel were escorted out of the area and observed to make sure they didn't tip off our target. I winked at Campbell, the rookie, to help him relax. He was assigned to the parking lot, out of harm's way. I left them all behind as I climbed up onto the roof of a warehouse that over-looked the area.

I stepped to the edge of the roof, and heard the soft click of a gun being cocked behind me.

"Fuck," I said. "This is a trap?"

"It is," a man agreed from a few feet behind me.

I looked down over the edge. It was a hundred-foot drop into the lake.

"Do you plan to jump?" he asked, as if it was an option.

"Nah, I can't swim." I put my hands up. "Okay if I turn around?"

"Certainly."

I turned, and there was Ben Fraser in a black leather jacket and jeans, looking a lot like his mug shot, except for the ice-cold blue eyes, the little smile, and the silenced pistol pointed at my head. He was like a tiger at the zoo; so beautiful you almost forgot the sharp teeth.

"Toss the weapon over here, please," he said.

I opened my jacket and pulled my gun out of its holster, real slow and careful, using just two fingers. I threw it, winced as it skittered across the concrete. Fraser was squinting at the badge on my shoulder-strap.

"Your name?" Fraser asked, as if he were about to cross me off a list. And then my body caught up to what was going on, and my heart started beating fast, revving up to give me whatever I needed to get out of this.

"Detective Ray Kowalski, CPD," I told him. "You're under arrest, so lay down your gun and come along quietly."

His lips twitched. "I'm afraid I must decline, Ray." He took a step back and brought his other hand up, moving into a relaxed Weaver stance. The pistol never wavered the whole time. He looked me up and down.

"Well, this is embarrassing," he said finally. "I feel like a tuna fisherman who's caught a dolphin in his net. I assume you have handcuffs?"

"Uh, yeah?" He looked at me, made a tiny gesture with his pistol. It took my brain a second to catch his drift. "Oh, right!" I pulled the cuffs out of my back pocket, and then paused.

No way. No way was I gonna let this guy get the drop on me and put me out of action with my own cuffs. I looked Fraser in the eye and tensed up to move. He wasn't scared, or angry, or excited. Just … ready. Ready to put me down like a dog if I tried anything.

Fuck. I snicked the cuffs closed over my own wrists.

"Lie down on your stomach, please, hands over your head."

So I did. Laying there, the cold metal of my own cuffs around my wrists, cheek pressed into the gritty concrete, felt … bad. Vulnerable. He frisked me, slow and thorough, without ever taking the gun off me. Very fucking thorough. One big, warm hand ran along my arms and sides. His jacket was old enough that it didn't creak, but new enough that I could still smell the leather.

Fraser's hand touched the small of my back, coasted over my back pockets, and I shivered. Gently parted my thighs, and worked all the way down to my ankles. I was breathing hard. He lifted me up a little to get to my front pockets, like it was easy, and it'd been so long since anybody actually touched me, part of me wanted him to keep going. Jesus, I had to get a grip. Fingers caught in my gelled-up hair and a hand got up close and personal with my balls.

"Hey!" I yelled. "What the fuck is your problem?"

"A simple precaution, Ray."

He took my back-up gun, radio, wallet, keys, glasses, watch, ID, and even my belt. I felt his boot come to rest gently on the small of my back. "I assume you didn't come to arrest me without back-up," he said.

Keep it cool, Ray. I decided to tell the truth. "Nah. We got detectives, uniforms, even a tactical unit getting into position down there."

"You're in charge of the tactical unit?"

"No, I'm just a detective with Major Crimes. My snitch brought in the lead, so it's my case."

"But you have sniper training."

How did he … oh. He knows because I took the high ground. "Just for a little while, back in the '80's." I remembered something from that half-day workshop on negotiating; you were supposed to try and make a personal connection with the hostage-taker. "My ex, she thought the teams were too dangerous."

"Hmmm. Have the RCMP been informed that I'm here?"

I didn't answer right away. The toe of his boot pushed down, right over my kidney. "Ooof. No. The top cops wanted to hand you over on a silver platter."

Fraser pulled a sleek little walkie-talkie of his own out of his pocket. He pushed the button a few times, in a pattern. There was a double hiss of static in response. He put it away, carefully unscrewed the silencer from his pistol and put it away in an inside coat pocket.

He moved off me and said, "You'll be coming with me. Up on your feet, please." I thought about it. If I resisted, there was no way he could force me off this roof. But Ben Fraser was a professional killer. I didn't really want to give him a reason to shoot me.

"Okay, Fraser, I'm moving."

Fraser had me climb down the ladder into the warehouse while he held a gun on me, then asked me to stand against the wall while he climbed down one-handed. As he reached the floor my radio crackled to life.

"Kowalski, did you want me and Gibbs north-east, or north-west?"

"Kowalski? Hey, has anybody seen Kowalski?"

"We should hurry," Fraser suggested. We walked back out through the warehouse doors, me going as slow as I figured I could get away with. A beat-up blue van was idling its engine at the loading dock. A Native guy jumped out of the driver's seat. He had shoulder-length black hair, a pretty face, and hadn't yet grown into his shoulders. I'd say he was old enough to drive, but not old enough to drink. The kid grinned at Fraser.

"Twenty tires down," he said, nodding at the patrol and unmarked cars in the lot. Shit.

"Good job," Fraser said, in a warmer tone than I'd heard from him yet. "Denny, this is Ray, my hostage, please make him feel welcome. Ray, Denny." I looked back at Fraser, but he seemed completely serious.

Denny looked me over and held out his hand. 'Personal connection', I reminded myself and lifted up my cuffed hands. We shook, quick and firm.

"Welcome to the madhouse, Ray," Denny said. He had some kind of accent.

My radio crackled again. "I see him, I see him, Detective Kowalski is with two unknown males in the parking lot, by a blue van. He's cuffed, and I think one of them's got a gun!" It was Campbell, the rookie.

Denny opened the van door. I turned, scanning the parking lot for Campbell, and so did Fraser. There, maybe thirty feet away, behind a parked car. Fraser raised his pistol, took aim, and I bumped into him as he fired. No way was I letting him shoot Campbell. Fraser huffed out a breath, irritated, and threw me into the van. I landed face first in a pile of army blankets.

"Shots fired! Shots fired!" came from my radio. Fraser scrambled in after me, tossed the radio, slammed the door, and the van took off.

"Well, that could have gone better," Fraser said, as I slid towards the back of the van. "You might have thrown off my aim enough that I actually hit that man."

I managed to sit up. I wanted to believe that Fraser hadn't really been shooting at Campbell. "What is this, take your son to work day?" I snarled at him, pointing at the kid driving the van.

"Not at all, Ray," he said, bracing himself against the seat back while the van skewed around a corner. "My profession doesn't have any schools or training programs, outside of the military. Denny's my apprentice."

Fraser switched his gun to his left hand and reached out with his right to ruffle Denny's hair. The kid arched back into the touch.

Fraser said something in a tongue twister of a language, all k's and l's. Denny slowed down. We drove like that for a few minutes, Fraser looking like he was thinking hard.

"Chopper, boss," Denny said.

"Oh dear," Fraser replied. "Where are we?" He looked out the front, and they had a short conversation in that weird language. It wasn't anything I recognized. Pretty slick way to keep secrets in front of the hostage.

Fraser turned back to me. "Now Ray, in a minute you'll be jumping from the vehicle."

"While it's moving?"

"Yes." Fraser was nodding, as if that was a totally normal thing to do.

The guy was two dimes short of a dollar. "Uh-uh. If you've decided to kill me, I'll just take a bullet, thanks anyway."

"Don't be silly, Ray. I'm not asking you to do anything I won't be doing myself. Denny will slow down at the next overpass, and we'll jump out. Just tuck in your arms, legs and head, and aim for the grassy verge. Visualize yourself as a ball flying through the air. I find that helps."

If we jumped out under cover of the highway, the chopper wouldn't see it. They'd assume I was still in the van. Fuck.

Fraser dragged me over to the van door, hauled it open, and turned to me with this gleam in his eye, and yelled, "Ready?" over the wind howling past us outside.

"No!" I yelled back at him.

Then the crazy fucker jumped out and dragged me with him. I curled up into a ball. Something slammed into my knee. I tried to roll with it, felt myself sliding through the grass, and then came to an almost gentle stop against a concrete pillar.

I stood up, heart pounding, feeling like I'd just gone through a boxing match, a firefight, and the world's best roller-coaster ride all rolled into one.

"You did it, Ray!" said Fraser, with a grin that lit me up from the inside. He grabbed me by the biceps, breathing hard, and then his eyes dipped down to my mouth, and he licked his lips. I … wow … I reached for him, felt the handcuffs tug, remembered I was a hostage, and grabbed for the gun in Fraser's holster.

He shoved me backwards, murmuring, "None of that now." Before I knew it he was behind me with the gun between us.

I limped my way through back alleys and back streets, pistol pushed into my lower back the whole time. Then Fraser moved a manhole cover, and gestured me down into the sewer. He handed me a little Maglite flashlight.

"What if I drop it?" I asked.

"I don't imagine picking it up would be very pleasant," he answered, kicking at the thin drool of sludge running down the center of the floor. "And if you tried to run for it in the dark, well, I do practice shooting blindfolded."

Crazy thing is, I believed him.

Once we got out of the sewers I spotted a few signs written in Chinese, so I figured the rumors were right, and Fraser really was hiding out in Chinatown. He pushed me through an unmarked door, talked Chinese and handed some money to a professionally blind old Chinese guy sitting behind a desk, and then marched me up some rickety stairs.

"Let me guess, this is the kind of place where nobody's gonna call the cops if I start yelling?" I asked as he opened the door to a tiny bathroom.

"My neighbors do seem to be lacking in a sense of civic responsibility," Fraser said. "Did you need to use the facilities?"

"Uh, sure." I took care of business, glad that my hands were cuffed in front of me. I didn't want to get civilians involved, anyway. And, with all the trouble Fraser was going through, he needed something more than a human shield while he got away from the cops. So maybe I had some leverage. Made it worth playing through, anyway.

Fraser opened a door at the far end of the hall. The room was barely lit by a few rays of sunlight peeking through the blinds drawn over a window. There was a bed, a table with two chairs, and a dresser with a mirror over it. Fraser locked the door behind us and asked me to wait in the far corner of the room. Then he turned on the over-head light and dragged a big, heavy wooden chair from the table to over near the door.

"If you would, Ray?" he asked politely, gesturing to the chair. I sat down, which had me facing the wall, about 6 feet down from the door.

"Ah, no, the other way around." I stood up and turned around, sat with the chair back in front of me. Fraser tossed me my handcuff key from the other side of the room, holding the gun on me. I undid one bracelet and then watched him for cues. Playing it through.

"Put it through the seat back," he ordered. I did, and then cuffed myself again. Great. Now I was chained to a big wooden chair. Not an improvement.

"The key, please?" I tried to throw it back, but the key landed on the floor about ten feet away from him. He tilted his head at me. I shrugged. So I throw like a girl when I'm handcuffed. So what.

Fraser picked up the key, took off his boots, hung his jacket over the back of another chair, and holstered his gun. He silently offered me a bottle of water, which I took and drank. A little awkward while cuffed, but I was thirsty. I handed the empty bottle back to Fraser. He removed the cap, peeled off the label, and scrunched the bottle.

"I'll recycle it," Fraser said. As if I might be worrying that the hired killer holding me hostage would improperly dispose of my water bottle.

He was being nice. Too nice. I got ready to turn down whatever offer he was about to make.

Fraser sat down on the bed, facing me. "Ray, I'm new to the area, and I need some information – "

"Nope," I said. The cuffs wouldn't let me cross my arms, so I planted my feet and leaned forward into the chair back. "Not gonna happen. We are not doing that whole 'Patty-stocking' thing."

Fraser's forehead creased and he silently mouthed a few words to himself. Then the light bulb came on. "You mean Stockholm Syndrome?"

"Right, that. Which we are not doing, because I know that you are in Chicago to kill somebody, and I'm not giving you any info that might help you do it."

Fraser leaned back on the bed, looking like a centerfold picture, and shrugged. "I assure you, Ray, it's no one that you'd miss."

"Well I'm thinking that I'd _miss_ anybody you murder in my city!"

Fraser tilted his head. "Really?" he asked, as if he were just too polite to call me a liar.

I looked down. Even leaving out the thing in Columbia, I'd been one of a whole bar full of cops that raised a glass to Ben Fraser when we heard he'd taken out the head of the Iguana crime family down in Vegas.

Fraser walked over to the table, grabbed a paper bag, and brought it back to the bed with him. "I have a few simple questions about the structure of the local crime syndicates, and then you can be on your way, well-compensated for the assistance you've given me." And as he talked he was pulling wads of cash out of the paper bag, laying them on the bed next to him. "You'd be protecting the local citizenry, really, since the better my information the more surgical my approach can be."

"You think this is the first time I been offered money?" And holy shit, were those hundreds? "Okay, maybe not that much, but still, I've never been on the take before, and I'm not starting today."

"Ah," Fraser said. He picked up the money and put it back in the bag. He walked over to the table, cleaned off the surface, and laid out a cloth on it. Then he bent down on the far side of the bed, and I heard the soft snick of metal clasps. Fraser stood up with a big, black, bolt-action sniper rifle. Looked like one of those NATO 308-caliber weapons. 800-yard effective range. Nice.

Fraser carried the rifle over to the table, quickly stripped it down, got out some brushes and oil, and started to clean it.

"I generally find," he said while dripping oil down the barrel, "that with the proper combination of pressure and incentives, men are willing to see reason."

"Well I don't see that good!" I said, and even I could tell how stupid that sounded the moment it came out my mouth.

"What a pity," Fraser said, like I was funny.

I felt my face heat up, and opened my big mouth. "Proper combination of pressure and incentives? What's that even mean? Let's say somebody needs a little girl whacked, to put some pressure on her father, you're the guy, huh? Are you that guy, Fraser?"

Fraser didn't look up from cleaning his rifle, but his lips stretched thin and pale. "No. Contract work is a niche market, and that's not my niche."

I settled back and waited. Fraser picked up a cloth and rubbed at a few drops of gun oil he'd spilled on his hand. Rubbed it again. Finally he looked up, eyes hard and hot.

"Any idiot with a rifle and a bad attitude can kill a child," he spat at me. "I take the hard targets, the real challenges –"

"You wouldn't kill an innocent little girl," I told him, sure of it as I've been of anything in my life. "And you wouldn't hurt me."

Fraser stalked across the room until he was standing over me. I remembered that I was still cuffed to a chair, and he still had a gun, and maybe pissing the guy off wasn't the smartest thing I'd ever done. "I would, if it were necessary." The muscles in his jaw worked, smoothed out, and when Fraser looked down at me his eyes were calm, cold crystal-blue. "Don’t make it necessary."

Then he walked away, sat down at the table, and finished cleaning his rifle. He was as careful and finicky about it as my sergeant in the teams, which is saying something. The scent of gun oil drifted across the room to me, comfortingly familiar. My knee throbbed, and I shifted to try to take the pressure off of it.

Fraser looked up. "Are you injured?"

"Uh, not really. I just banged my knee a little when we jumped out of the van."

Fraser finished up what he was doing, wiped his hands on a cloth, and walked across the room to me. He squatted down and started gently tapping on and around my kneecap. I hissed in a breath when he hit the sore part.

"I need to get a look at it," he said pulling a big knife out of nowhere.

"Hey!" I protested.

Fraser seemed kind of offended. "I assure you, Ray, you're in no danger. I just need to split the jeans along the seam so I can tend to your knee."

The weird thing is, it hadn't even occurred to me he might do something bad with the knife. "Its not that. I just … I like these jeans."

His eyes twinkled up at me. "Well in that case, would you like my assistance in taking them off?"

That was a bad idea. But my knee did hurt. And the 'personal connection' thing was good, right? "Uh, sure," I said.

First Fraser untied my boots, pulled them off, and put them off to the side. Then he gestured for me to stand up. He opened my button-fly in one solid rip. Okay, yeah, he'd done that before. He pulled them down over my hips, down my thighs, and it was not my fault that my cock was taking an interest. There was a gorgeous guy stripping off my clothes, and even though I tried to silently explain to my dick that I was cuffed, and he was dangerous, and this was for medicinal purposes anyway, it didn't really seem to care.

He pushed the other leg of my jeans all the way down. I lifted up my foot, steadying myself on the chair, and he pulled it off and then threaded that part through, behind the chair back, his hands coming within an inch of my dick. I sucked in a breath, but he just gave my erection a quick, appreciative glance, didn't say a word.  
Then he eased the other jeans leg down over my sore knee.

I plopped back down in the seat, a little too distracted to be graceful, as Fraser inspected my knee.

"Well, it's not bad," Fraser said eventually. "A bit of an abrasion, and you'll have a nasty bruise tomorrow. Just a moment," he said, stood up, and walked out the door.

I had just enough time to get over being left with my pants down, literally, and start wondering if I could make it over to the window when he can back in with an ice bucket.

"This will clean out the abrasion, and should also help keep the swelling down," Fraser said, pulling a piece of ice out of the bucket. As he knelt down he added, "It may sting a bit."

Fraser cleaned up my knee, first with the piece of ice, and then with an alcohol swab. It smarted, a sharp little pain over the deep, dull one. I kept my eyes on the window across the room. Fraser knelt there, holding an ice pack on my knee for a while. It was stupid, letting a little thing like cleaning up my knee get to me. Only, the last time somebody looked out for me like that was Stella. And even with her, it must have been ten years ago when she stopped.

It's like, that time I got shot, I used up all of her caring about me getting hurt. Any time after that I got messed up in the line of duty, Stella was just pissed off. She'd say, "If it hurts, take a painkiller," like she didn't even want to know. So, after a while, I stopped telling her. And a while after that, she kicked me out.

Fraser patted my knee dry, then got out a little first aid kit and put some stinky ointment and a band-aid on it. Then he helped me put my jeans back on, and it wasn't sexy at all, just caring. An aching heart's a lot harder to ignore than aching balls.

"Thanks," I said in a hoarse voice.

He looked up and met my eyes. "You're welcome, Ray," he said, like it meant something. Then he sat back on the floor, resting with his back against the bed. "If you don't mind me asking, was your father a police officer?"

Some little voice in me chimed in with 'personal connection,' but the rest of me didn't give a damn. "No. No, my Dad hated me being a cop. He, uh, pretty much stopped talking to me the day I graduated from the Academy."

Fraser shook his head like he couldn't hardly believe it. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Ray. Why did you choose to join the police force, then?"

"Well, it's a funny story," I said, my voice a little too high. "You'll laugh." Everybody thinks me and Stella were some kind of joke. But Fraser was just sitting there; calm, serious, listening like this was the most important thing in the world.

"I was thirteen and she was a Gold Coast girl. Private school. She was untouchable, but I was working it. I was lying like a maniac. I was John Lennon, James Bond, Joe Namath, all rolled into one." I told him the whole sorry story about Marcus Ellery, the big bad bank robber, and stupid little Stanley Kowalski, wetting his pants in front of everybody. The basis for my whole fucked-up marriage, right there.

Fraser didn't laugh. At the end he said, "I'm surprised you didn't decide to become a bank robber."

"Yeah, well, I always wanted to be one of the good guys." That got a little nod out of him. "Ellery disappeared off the grid eight years ago, but I keep hoping he'll turn up. He's got family in the area."

"I could …" Fraser looked away, cracked his neck, and said quietly, "I could help you with that, if you like. When I'm finished with my present assignment."

The way he said it reminded me of Alexi, a kid in my first-grade class. Alexi didn't speak much English, but one day he slid a baseball card over to me, all shy, during snack time. Once I took it, we were friends.

I almost said yes, before I realized that a contract killer was offering to 'help' me with Ellery. And maybe I was looking for some payback, a little revenge, but not ... not like that.

"No thanks, Fraser," I said. He nodded, checking out his own jeans. "I really appreciate the offer, though."

I reached my foot out and bumped it into his. "So," I said when he looked up. "What about you? Why'd you decide to … do what you do?"

"Ah," Fraser said, rubbing a thumb over his eyebrow, smoothing it down. "I wouldn't call it a decision, as such. More a chain of events."

"I get that," I told him. "I do."

He took a deep breath, let it out slow, and said in a news-reader voice, "When I was six years old, my mother was murdered. I heard the shot, went outside, and watched her die."

A little sound came out of me, but Fraser ignored it and kept going. "I went to live with my grandparents. They were traveling librarians, up north. It was difficult for them to take on a small boy at that time in their lives, but they tried to make a place for me. When I was ten, there was a car accident." He was studying the carpet.

"Did they die?" I asked.

"My grandmother died almost immediately. My grandfather was in hospital, unable to care for me. So my father came home." His eyes flicked to me. "My father was a member of the RCMP. Did you know that?"

I shook my head.

"He was something of a legend in his own time," Fraser said with a twist to his lips. "When I was a child he was out on patrol for months at a time. Before my grandparents died I can only remember two holidays he was able to spend with us. He had to give up those assignments and accept a desk job, after the accident. He resented it, naturally. And I was very tenderhearted, as a child. I felt things deeply. My father found it … effeminate. When I was twelve years old, my father took me to hunt caribou."

Fraser sat up straight and stared me in the eye. "Now, you have to understand, Ray, that I was eager to go. Every Inuit boy has to kill a caribou in order to be considered a man, and I wanted to prove myself to my father. We tracked the caribou together, through difficult terrain, and he ... he was proud of me, of my skills, I think. Then we found the herd. I aimed at a buck at the outskirts of the herd, and then, just as I was about to take my shot, it turned to look at me."

Fraser's eyes closed. His breath came out in a little sigh. "His eyes were a limpid brown, peaceful, curious. He was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. And then my father whispered, 'Shoot' in my ear, and my finger jerked on the trigger."

Fraser's eyes opened. "I missed the shot, of course," he continued. "The buck was wounded, but not dead. And my father, he picked me up by the collar of my coat and dragged me down the hill, yelling that no son of his would miss such an easy shot, and I'd better finish the job. When we got there, there was blood on the snow, just like my mum, and the caribou, he was hurt, he was terrified, desperately trying to get up so that he could run away. My father, he was screaming at me, and I, I closed a door in my head. And then I could breath, and the caribou was just a dumb animal in the snow, and I reached out with a steady hand and put a bullet between its eyes. And when I turned around, my father was still yelling. But he was just another dumb animal making noise in the snow."

I sat upright, the handcuffs rattling against the chair. "You didn't –"

Fraser glanced up at me, eyes flat. "No, I didn't. But I could have, easily. So I left the next day, headed south."

"I ended up in Toronto, after I ran away from home," he said in a matter-of-fact voice. "I did, well, all the things that boys do, to survive on the street," Fraser said, pulling that knife out from his boot and balancing it on his finger, blade on one side, handle on the other. "And then I caught Joe McNally's eye."

"Joe had an eye for the pretty boys?" I asked.

"He did, actually." Fraser shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal. "His attentions weren't entirely unwelcome. And in return, Joe offered me … everything. Joe gave me a roof over my head, a family, a place to belong. He trained me." He smiled fondly at nothing for a moment, and then gave the knife a fancy flip before holstering it.

We sat there for a minute, not saying anything. I guess Fraser was remembering stuff. Me, I was trying to imagine what it was like to be a kid so freaked out, so alone, that a guy offering you three hots, a cot, and assassin training in return for playing 'hide the salami' seemed like a great deal.  



	2. Chapter 2

Fraser flashed to his feet with his gun out, real graceful, and pressed himself against the wall between me and the door. There was a knock. There was another knock, a silence, and then one more. Fraser relaxed and unlocked the door.

Denny burst in. "Hey, Ben," he said, throwing himself face-first onto the bed. "Miss me?"

"Just a little," Fraser said warmly. "Any problems?"

Denny had arched over to the far side of the bed and was rooting around in the packs there. "Nah," came his answer, half-muffled by the bed. "Dumped the van, picked up another vehicle, transferred our stuff. How'd things go this end? Ray playing nice?"

Fraser glanced at me. "We've … been getting to know one another."

Denny came up with a Snickers bar. "Didn't have time for lunch," he explained, peeling it open and chewing. An expression of pure bliss spread over his face as he settled back against the pillows.

"I'll go pick us up something to eat in a moment. Don't spoil your appetite."

"Oh," Denny said in a honeyed voice, "I got plenty of appetite left." His legs fell open and he trailed his free hand up the inside seam of his 501's, an invitation that belonged in a porno flick.

Holy shit. I'd tell them to get a room, only they had a room, and I was chained up in it, and I do not rent that kind of porn. I glanced up at Fraser. He'd turned his head to stare at the far wall, and the back of his neck was flushed red. "Denny, I thought we'd settled this," he said. He sounded pissed-off.

My stomach growled. Denny collapsed over onto his side, looking a little embarrassed.

"Oh, hey Ray, I'm sorry. I got another Snickers here, if you want?" I wasn't sure if he was apologizing for not offering me a candy bar in the first place, or for the whole sex kitten thing.

"No, that's okay, I can wait," I said.

"Right then. I'll be back within thirty minutes," Fraser said, pulling my handcuffs key out of his pocket and handing it over to Denny.

"Before you go, boss," Denny said, "I've got a tradecraft question."

Fraser was instantly 100% the focused professional. "Ask."

"Hypothetical situation. Let's say you're in a city, and somebody wants you dead."

Fraser nodded crisply. "It happens."

"So you stay in the same safe house for over a week."

Fraser looked like he'd just bitten into something sour. "Yes?"

"And you go out every day at the same time, show your face to the maximum number of people who are sure to notice and remember you." Denny furrowed his brow and tapped a finger against his lips, broadcasting 'confused' on all channels. "Is that a _good_ thing?"

"There's no need for histrionics," Fraser snapped. "He would stand out as much in this area as I do, and I'm always careful to avoid sight lines." Fraser turned to me. "Ray, have you heard a rumor that I'm staying in Chinatown?" he asked, like I was settling a bet.

"Not from a source I trust, but yeah. Day before yesterday." Who was 'he'? Was there really somebody after Fraser?

"There, you see, it's working," Fraser told Denny.

"All that means is that the cops'll be on our asses soon."

"Since the port scenario didn't pan out, while we're waiting for other options to come to fruition," and Fraser didn't look at me when he said that, but Denny sure did, "we might as well stick with the fall-back plan. Any special requests for dinner?"

"Just don't get any chicken feet this time, those things are disgusting," Denny said.

Fraser nodded on his way out. Denny closed the door, locked it, and then leaned forward to rest his forehead against the wood. He looked tired, all of a sudden.

"Denny?" I said.

"Yeah?" he muttered to the door.

"Looks like you're maybe not completely on-board with this situation. If you're feeling trapped, scared, uncomfortable with what's going on, anything like that – I can help get you out."

Denny turned his whole body. Leaning his weight on the door, he asked, "Really?"

"Sure. I mean, what have you done in Chicago? Slashed a few tires, driven a getaway car. That's peanuts. I know the ADA. If you want out of the life, I could make sure nobody presses charges."

"You want to save me from _Ben_?" Denny started giggling. It made him look about twelve. "I'm sorry, that's too funny! Sweet, though. I can see why he likes you."

Denny walked over to the bed, sat down, and bounced a few times. "Look Ray, let me set your mind at ease. I was in a bad place a couple of years ago." For just a second I caught a sight of wounded eyes before he flopped backwards. "Ben helped me out, no strings attached. I signed on 'cause he's the best thing ever happened to me."

"Okay, I hear you," I said. "But if Fraser ever steps over the line, does something you didn't sign up for -"

He rolled over onto his side and stared at me. "Oh. Do you think we're _fucking_? I wish. He won't even -" Denny made a quick hand gesture down by the fly of his jeans. "you know, when I'm in the room. So if you're interested, go for it."

"Umm, no. I'm not …" What was I trying to say? Not interested? Not gay? Not trying to get in your boss's pants?

"Sure, Ray, sure. Just, if you were, it'd be fine with me. He needs somebody, something besides the job. Hey – are you from Chicago?"

"Born and bred. Why?"

Denny scooted around so he was up on his elbows facing me. "Does Chicago really have a cursed sports team?"

So I told Denny all about the Cubs, and Billy Sianis, and the Curse of the Billy Goat.

Then he told me this crazy story about a sled-dog that changed himself into a man and convinced a family he was a visitor from another village, so they would let him stay with them over-night, and he could get some quality time with their pretty daughter.

"When the sun rose," Denny said, "the man woke to find his daughter curled around the furry form of his lead sled-dog. He chased the dog out into the snow. Shamed at the thought of his favorite daughter giving birth to puppies, he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her to his boat, rowed out to a distant island, and abandoned her there."

I waited.

Denny got up and grabbed a bottle of water.

"So what happened next," I asked. "Did the sled-dog guy rescue her?"

"Well, Ray, it's a two-day story. You'll have to ask me tomorrow."

"Denny, I'm not planning on being here tomorrow."

"Oh, right." He took a swig of water and shrugged. "Too bad. I guess you'll have to decide what happens to her, tell the rest of the story yourself."

What was that about? Some weird Arabian Knights thing? Was he trying to convince me to stick around? I did not get this kid.

"Denny, tell me something."

"Yeah?"

"Why do you want to do this job?"

Denny polished off the rest of the bottle and tossed it in the trash. "Well, the money's good, and it's fun following Fraser around."

"And how about the future? When you're thirty, do you still see yourself following Fraser around?"

Denny crinkled up his face at me, like I'd just asked him what he was going to do when he got to the Moon. "Thirty? I don't really see that happening, Ray, but if it does, I'll figure something out."

I'd worked with gang kids who figured they were more likely to get a funeral than another birthday party. It was a dangerous state of mind.

"Denny –"

There was a double knock at the door. Denny dropped to one knee behind the bed, pointing his piece at the door. After a few seconds, I heard three more knocks. Denny stood up and holstered his weapon. A key scraped at the lock, and Fraser came in carrying a big grocery bag.

"Hello Denny, Ray," he said heartily. "Having fun?"

"Yeah," Denny answered. "Ray, tell him about the Billy Goat!"

Fraser unpacked a bunch of those little white paper take-out containers while I told him the story. Everything smelled great. Even without the handcuffs, I couldn't have handled the chopsticks, so the two of them took turns feeding me bites from their dinner.

I couldn't tell what any of it was. When I asked Fraser, he would only tell me the names in Chinese. According to Denny, we were eating 'rat tail soup', 'marinated walrus balls', 'stir-fried pigeon', and my personal favorite, 'mink lips in mint sauce'. Denny was cracking himself up, which started me going, and Fraser had this happy little crinkle to his eyes.

If I wasn't here, I'd be sitting on my couch watching re-runs, reheating last night's pizza, and washing it down with a few beers, or, if it was a bad day, a half-bottle of Stoli. And this feeling I was feeling, I recognized it from undercover jobs. You know you're going under a little too deep when your fake life, the one with the bad guys, starts to seem a lot more fun than your real life.

But I was a cop. I am a cop. And I'm not telling Fraser anything that could get anybody killed.

Denny checked his watch and jumped up. "Got to get going, I'm meeting some friends at seven."

He raced around, changing into black jeans and braiding his hair while Fraser cleaned up what was left of dinner.

"Where's my blue shirt?" Denny asked from the far side of the bed, tossing clothes out of the packs.

"You didn't bring it. Try this one," Fraser said, handing back the white button-down that had landed on the floor.

Denny slipped into it. "How do I look?" he asked breathlessly.

"Very handsome," Fraser answered solemnly.

Denny grinned at him, and was out the door.

"Have a good time!" Fraser called after him. Then he closed and locked the door.

What was Fraser to that kid? Dad, boss, sugar daddy, what?

"He's meeting friends? Isn't that a little weird when you guys are, you know, working?"

Fraser shrugged. "Denny's very friendly. And it's important that he spend time with people his own age. If he socializes exclusively with me, he might end up … peculiar."

I coughed to cover a sudden laugh. "Yeah, I can feel myself getting more peculiar by the minute over here."

Fraser was picking up the clothes Denny had thrown all over the place. He turned to look at me, lips quirked into a tiny smile. "Why, I had no idea you were so impressionable."

Once Fraser finished cleaning up after Hurricane Denny, he pulled out a book, turned on a bedside lamp, and flopped down on the bed to read.

After a minute, he sat up. "My apologies, Ray, I'm not used to entertaining guests. Would you like me to read to you?"

Apparently I was a guest now, which was a step up from hostage. "Uh, sure, Fraser."

>  _Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,  
>  Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,  
> Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,  
> Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?  
> Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,  
> Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?  
> Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;  
> Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost._ [1](http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=4933)

  
Fraser read me poems about wild, snowy places like a junkie craving his next fix. He made it sound scary, and beautiful, and clean, and more real than the city streets I'd known my whole life. I found that if I was careful, I could lay my arms on the seat back to make a decent pillow. Fraser had a nice voice.

***********************

I must have dozed off, because a knock at the door woke me up. Fraser was standing already, pistol out, finger on his lips telling me to be silent. I nodded. We waited for about 30 seconds, and then heard three more knocks. Fraser relaxed, walked across the room, and opened the door.

" _Denny_ ," Fraser said in a hollowed-out voice. I craned my neck to see. Fraser barked out an order in that funny language. Denny argued. Something was wrong, he sounded out of breath. Fraser helped the kid in, and as they brushed past me, I smelled blood.

Fraser laid Denny down on his back, on the bed, still arguing with him about something. He unbuttoned the kid's blood-soaked shirt and grabbed a towel to wipe his chest clean. Denny was trying to talk, but kept getting interrupted by a hacking cough. The wound was in the left side of his chest, just under the heart. I barely caught a glimpse before the area flooded with a fresh spurt of blood.

"Fraser – that doesn't look good."

"I know," he growled at me, wiping away the blood again. Denny was wheezing.

"You need to get him to a hospital!"

Fraser looked up at me, eyes wild, teeth bared. "He won't _go_. And even if he did … collapsed lung, there's too much blood loss, I think the bullet's damaged an artery, even if he went into surgery right now …"

Fraser was frantic. Denny started talking again, patting Fraser's arm, trying to talk him down. I wished I could understand what they were saying.

A quick, urgent spate of conversation. Then Fraser got off the bed, went to his jacket, and pulled out the silencer. He screwed it onto the muzzle of his gun, face pale and determined, as he walked back towards the bed.

"Uh … guys?" I said. They both ignored me. This was just fucked up. I had to get free of these cuffs, get to my phone, call an ambulance. "I'm not letting you do this!" I got to my feet and picked up the chair. "Stop!" Fraser walked past me, switched his gun to his left hand, and backhanded me into the wall.

Fuck. My ears were ringing, iron tang of blood in my mouth, like a knockout in the ring, and I slid down the wall back into my chair.

Fraser was on the bed, kneeling down with Denny's thighs between his legs. He leaned forward and gently pressed the silencer against Denny's forehead. Fraser asked a question. Denny answered, real soft, then closed his eyes and smiled. They were frozen there, like that, just for a moment, like some movie of the week that was about to fade to black. Then Denny choked, choked, his eyes shot open, and his hand fisted into Fraser's jacket. I closed my eyes and heard a loud 'fwip'.

When I opened my eyes, Denny was lying there, still and heavy. Dead doesn't look anything like asleep. It's just different. Details slipped through my mind – multiple gunshot wounds, stippling around the entry wound to the head, as if I was writing a report. As if that would make it so I wasn't chained to a fucking chair a few feet away from the corpse of a kid who'd been breathing a second ago. I've never been any good with dead things.

Fraser laid the pistol down on the bed, but he hadn't moved aside from that. He stared into the kid's dead eyes and whispered, "In the late nineteenth century, it was commonly believed the killer's image would be permanently burned into the retina of his victim."

"Uh, Fraser?" My voice was high and wavery.

"Yes?" Fraser was talking to me, but he wasn't looking away from that dead kid's face, not for a second.

"Have you ever thought of maybe retiring?"

"At times," he said hoarsely.

"Well, maybe you should think about it again. 'Cause I don't think this is good for you."

Fraser blinked a few times. "You may have a point," he said in a voice that almost sounded normal. He slid off the bed and rummaged around in the bags on the far side, came up with a Snickers bar. He peeled off the wrapper and placed it carefully in the kid's dead hand. I wondered if Denny was cold enough yet that the chocolate wouldn't melt. Then I decided I really, really didn't want to know. "But I can't stop," Fraser said.

It took me a second to remember what we were talking about. "Is it the money?" I asked.

Fraser sat down carefully on the bed and picked up Denny's other hand, held it gently. I noticed that the knees of his jeans were dark with blood. "No, I had enough money to retire on by the time I was eighteen. It's never been about the money, really."

He lay down on his side and placed Denny's hand on his chest, where the blood had pooled. He glanced at me over the body, then looked back at the wound and started to speak.

"When Joe was killed, I took out the shooters, and the man who ordered the hit." He reached down, touched Denny's chest, and then held up his gory hand. "Do you see? I _attract_ Death. At least this way I can - I can find it the best possible targets," he said, low, stumbling over his own words. "Death and I went into business together that day," he said, stroking his eyebrow. It left a streak. "And I suppose no one's made me a better offer since."

Fraser looked me in the eye, and ... fuck. I'd delivered the bad news to too many front doors over the years, had people sit down before I told them about their son, their mother, their husband, their child. And some of them would cry, and some of them would scream at you, and some would faint. But the worst, the very worst, were the ones who just kept going, walking and talking like nothing had changed, right up until the moment when it smashed them to pieces. That look in Fraser's eyes; I recognized it. That was a countdown to him going boom.

He got up, and washed his hands and face in a bowl of water on the table. "So, Ray," he asked conversationally, "have you ever used your weapon in the line of duty?"

I stretched my shoulders, a little nervous about where this was going. "Yeah," I told him.

"And did you shoot to kill?" He dried his hands on a towel.

"That's how we're trained."

"I assume that you're a skilled marksman?" Fraser stripped efficiently out of his bloodstained jeans, put on another pair from his pack, and looked at me expectantly. "Well?"

"When I've got my glasses on, sure." Fraser's hands hovered over the pile of my stuff on the table. Then he picked up my glasses and tossed them to me. It was a good throw, right into my hands. I ducked down my head so that I could put them on. My chin jerked up, defensive, 'cause I know my glasses are kind of dorky looking.

A smile flitted over his face. "Charming. Now, given that you've had to use your weapon, and that you're skilled in its use, have you ever killed anyone?"

"Yeah." Three bodies on my jacket, and that was three more than most cops, but it's a big bad city, and I'm a good shot.

Fraser drifted closer, feet scuffing on the wooden floor. He looked funny, needy. "And do you remember their faces, Ray?"

"Yes." Doug O'Dell, who came at me with a tire iron when I responded to a domestic call. Frank Lepinski, dead of wounds sustained during a firefight, when he took a little boy hostage during a buy-bust. Giulletti, who I saw through the scope for maybe two seconds from the time when he pulled aside the curtain to look out and I called it in, until I heard 'green light' in my ear and pulled the trigger.

"Good, that's good," Fraser said, sinking down onto the floor in front of me. "I remember the caribou, but the men do tend to run together after a while," he whispered. "Could you kill again, Ray?"

"If I had to," I said to Fraser's bowed head, almost close enough for me to reach out and touch his hair. "That's why the badge comes with a gun, 'cause sometimes you have to, to protect people, to keep them safe."

Fraser took a deep, shuddering breath. Then he stood up, dusted off his pants, walked over to the table and picked up the towel.

His face was blank, didn't give me any clues to what was going on with him. He started wiping the towel across the table, the bowl, the mirror, and the doorknob.

At first I couldn't figure out what he was doing. Dusting? Why would he … Then it hit me. He was wiping off any fingerprints he'd left behind.

Fraser bustled around the room, unpacking and repacking the bags on the other side of the bed, scribbling a note on a piece of paper, wiping a few more things down with the towel. He put on his leather jacket, picked up the rifle case and one of the backpacks, and paused by the door.

"I've written Denny's full name, both in Inuktitut syllabary and phonetically, on the paper. I'd take it as a personal favor if you would speak his name out loud when he's buried. Your handcuff keys are on the table. You should be able to work your way over to them in a few minutes."

Fraser walked to the door. He pulled his cuff down over his hand and went to turn the doorknob. Then he stopped, turned his head to see me. And I held my breath, like you do before an explosion, counting down in my head. Three, two, one –

Fraser lunged across the few feet of carpet separating us, grabbed me by the shoulders, and crushed his lips up against mine. It wasn't a kiss. He was too frantic, angry, almost biting; trying to take something from me that he needed bad. I reached out with my cuffed hands, grabbed his shirt, and pulled him closer, turning my head and gentling my lips, trying to give it. After a minute he pulled off to the side, panting into my neck.

I brushed my lips along his cheek to his ear and whispered, "Let me help."

Fraser pushed away, fell backwards down onto the floor and lay there staring up at me like I was the one with the gun and the knife and the twenty-nine kills. Then he stumbled to his feet, grabbed the rifle case and backpack, and rushed out the door.

"See you around, Fraser," I yelled after him. Then it was just me and the dead kid in a room that smelled like blood and worse.

It took me five minutes to get across the room to the handcuff keys. I ran out to the bathroom, puked, and then called dispatch.

********************

Denny was buried a week later. Nobody had claimed his remains, so he was cremated. They put the little box in the ground in the county cemetery. His full name was on a little metal plate, almost like a dog tag, that was screwed into a flat stone to mark the spot. I tried to get them to write it in his language, but they said they didn't have the right letters for that. The priest thought I was nuts, but I said Denny's real name and put the first shovel full of dirt on his grave myself. I hope I said it right. I'd been practicing, but it was tricky.

I went home to change after Denny's funeral. I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. Not in a creepy, drama-trauma way. Just … it was intense. Interesting. _Fraser_ was interesting. You've gotta be pretty hard up for a day spent with a hired killer and his dead apprentice to be the highlight of your social calendar.

Maybe I was that hard up.

I mean, I could go out for drinks with the boys from the precinct, sure. But I'd never really cared about that. I wasn't a big people person. I'd get off shift, go home to Stella, and that was plenty for me. She was my best friend.

Now, with her gone, I mostly just went home. And my turtle's not much of a conversationalist. At work there was Douglas, my partner, who's … actually, he's kind of an asshole. He'd called in sick most of the week, anyway. Probably worried that my fuck-up would tarnish his image.

I had fourteen open cases on my desk. Denny's case was already closed. The Filipino gangsta wanna-be that shot Denny for flirting with his girlfriend at Club Tang was caught within a day. We had witnesses, ballistics, the murder weapon with his prints on it, even a confession.

The little punk was getting away with 'aggravated assault', even though the autopsy confirmed my testimony that Denny's chest wound would've killed him. His lawyer plea-bargained it down, and the DA went along because he wanted to hang the homicide on Fraser. My fist still hurt from punching a locker when Stella called to give me the news. I was a cop, she was an ADA, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.

So now Fraser had 30 kills on his jacket. Thirty. An age Denny would never see.

The paperwork for getting kidnapped by a perp, and losing my service revolver (even though Campbell found it ten minutes later) and then being handcuffed to a chair while a kid was shot in front of you? Yeah, that paperwork took a few days to sort out.

IA kept trying to get me to admit I accepted a pay-off. I even thought they might be tailing me, trying to dig up some dirt. I kept getting this itchy feeling like I was being watched.

The Feds had me interviewed by a wet-behind-the-ears agent named Diego. He talked to me for maybe a half hour. At the end I tried to give him some ideas how we could stop Fraser taking out his target in Chicago.

Diego said, "The Bureau has a list of local underworld figures high-profile enough to merit Ben Fraser's attention. We'll catch him without any, ah, _assistance_ from the locals." My union rep stopped me from taking a swing at him.

The Canadians sent over a Mountie chick, Constable Brighton, to interrogate me. She seemed to think that I should have over-powered Fraser with my mad kung-fu skills, or something, but at least she didn't assume I was a complete idiot.

Sergeant Harahan over at the 22nd said he'd have his boys checkout Denny's grave whenever they drove by on patrol, but that was a long shot. Fraser was good at disappearing. So the best way to stop Fraser from killing his target was to find the target first, get him into protective custody. Or jail. Fraser's targets pretty much all belonged there anyway. Of course, that meant I had to figure out who the target was, and that could be tricky.

I went back into work and looked through the case file that Constable Brighton had left for me, when she was done raking me over the coals.  
 _Mother: Caroline Fraser, deceased November 22, 1967_  
Poor little kid.  
 _Father: Sergeant Robert Fraser, RCMP, deceased September 3, 1994_  
That was three weeks ago. Fraser's dad died three weeks ago.

This was important, I could feel it, my cop senses were tingling. I called Constable Brighton, asked her for any information she could get me on Robert Fraser's death.

Twenty minutes later Verna, our Civilian Aide, slid a fax onto my desk. It was a one page incident report that said Robert Fraser died as a result of a hunting accident. A single .30-06 gunshot wound, through and through. No round or casing recovered. No suspects, not many details, and, as far as I could tell, not much of an investigation.

 _'Officers combed the area and found no evidence of foul play,'_ the report said. What the fuck?

When a cop takes a bullet, we don't close the case until we know for sure what happened. Suicide, homicide, accidental death – doesn't matter. It gets looked at, real close. There's an autopsy, interviews, photos of the scene. Actual police work gets done.

This "hunting accident" thing, there was something queer about it.

Okay. So, assume it's not an accident. Assume it's a murder. Assume Fraser's dad got murdered.

It could be personal. Somebody with a grudge. But this felt too … neat, to be personal. Tidy enough to be professional hit.

Maybe Fraser did it. I let the thought dangle there in my head for a second, but I didn't buy it. One, I was pretty sure Fraser would have told me if he offed his dad. Two, I'd seen Fraser's rifle, and it was a .308, not a .30-06. Shooters were loyal to their guns; they didn't play the field like that.

So, it wasn't Fraser. But it was a pro.

Maybe the Mountie pissed somebody off up there in Freezerland, and that somebody decided to bring in some out-of-town talent to settle things.

And Fraser, being in the business himself, finds out. What's he gonna do?

I remembered Fraser telling me, _'When Joe was killed, I took out the shooters, and the man who ordered the hit.'_ I didn't need any crime scene photos, any evidence – Fraser'd already done the legwork. And it led him here, to Chicago. Fraser put out a rumor that he was coming to Chicago to settle a score, and then he set a trap to catch a sniper. The sniper that killed his dad.

It all fit – Fraser was in town to kill a guy, and that same guy was gunning for him. That explained why Denny was so worried about Fraser wandering around Chinatown.

The hitter shouldn't be too hard to find, actually. Chicago had plenty of knee-breakers, thugs, and crooks willing to put a bullet in the competition for their gang or outfit. But perps with sniper skills who would take freelance jobs? Couldn't be more than a dozen. I had a connection, from an undercover job a few years back, who could point me in the right direction.

Time to shake some trees, see what fell out.

The first two guys I checked out were real helpful, once I told them I was looking for a witness to a crime that took place in Canada a few weeks ago. They both had solid alibis that placed them in Chi-Land. It was nice dealing with professionals – they never want to start anything with the police. The third guy on my list, Frankie Drake, didn't have a recent address, so I went to talk to his ex-wife.

That lady was at the ragged end of something. She said she hadn't seen Drake in weeks, but her black eye was telling me another story. I asked her to pass a message on to Drake, but as soon as the word 'Canada' came out my mouth, she flinched. Bingo. I gave her my card and told her to call if she thought of anything that might help.

I stayed outside of the apartment for a few hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of Drake. I even put in a call to the lieu, asked him to approve a second shift to keep an eye on her place. But Mrs. Drake's flinch connecting Frankie Drake to Canada, which connected him to Robert Fraser's death, which connected him to Ben Fraser, wasn't enough for Lieutenant Renton. Couldn't really blame him.

I left when it got dark, went to a diner near the precinct, took a really big piss, grabbed a burger since I'd missed lunch, and headed back into the bullpen to sign out for the evening. There was a 'While You Were Out' memo on my desk, re: Mr. Drake. There was no phone number to call, just an address across town.

"Verna," I yelled, "do you remember this caller?" Verna was our Civilian Aide. She was a lot like my mom, if mom was black and could hold her own in the heavyweight division.

"Sure do, honey," she yelled back from her computer.

"Was it a woman?" I was hoping Mrs. Drake saw the light.

"No, it was a nice boy. Real polite," Verna looked at me over her glasses. "Unlike some people around here."

I could only think of one polite boy who had anything to do with this case.


	3. Chapter 3

I got to the address, and it was a boarded-up, abandoned house. The kind I used to chase drunks and junkies out of once a week like clockwork back when I walked a beat. There was a light flickering up on the second floor.

I put on my glasses, pulled out my flashlight and gun, and walked up the stairs, quick and careful as I could. They creaked.

"Ray, you're just in time! Come up and join us," Fraser called out.

When I reached the second floor, there was a lantern on the floor. Fraser was standing in the near-right corner of the room. Frankie Drake was duct-taped to a chair in the middle. Drake was gagged, and his hair was greased down with sweat. I could smell him from the stairs.

"How'd you find him?" I asked, trying to buy a little time while I figured out what to do.

"It was easy, Ray – I was certain your investigation would bear fruit sooner or later. So I followed you. When you staked out Mr. Drake's apartment, I knew it must be the place. Mr. Drake came running out less than a minute after you drove off."

"Fraser, that's … really annoying. Do you even know if he's the right guy?"

Fraser held out a photo. I holstered my weapon, walked over and took it from him. The photo showed six men in hunting gear, standing in the snow. Five were respectable citizens in their late forties. And then there was Frankie Drake. Yeah, one of these things is not like the others. I stuck the photo in my pocket.

"Now Mr. Drake," Fraser said, "would I have invited a police detective to join us if I had no intention of letting you go?" He ripped the tape off of Drake's mouth.

Drake spat out a white cloth. "He's your pocket-cop, probably just called him in to get rid of the body."

"On the contrary, Diogenes himself would have been satisfied had he found Ray. Let's get down to business. I need the name of the man who hired you to kill Sergeant Robert Fraser."

I guess Fraser wanted me to sit in on the interrogation. I moved to the left corner of the room, so I could keep an eye on both Drake and Fraser for the duration.

"No way," Drake said, shaking his head back and forth. "No fucking way. He'll kill me."

Fraser pulled out a knife and started cleaning under his nails with it. "I can't be certain, not knowing the man in question, but it's highly unlikely he'd be willing or able to do anything worse to you than I could. I assume you know my reputation?"

"Yeah," Drake said, "but you're quick and clean, not –"

Fraser threw the knife. It quivered in the wood of the chair between Drake's wrists, and he let out a little yelp. Fraser stepped up to Drake, pulled the knife out of the chair, slid around behind him, and bent down so his mouth was right next to Drake's ear.

"But you see, none of those were personal. None of them killed my father." Fraser said.

Drake looked pale as milk. Fraser definitely had bad cop covered, so I stepped in to try a little good cop.

"Drake, all you need to do is give up a name. I'll take you out of here, book you, and get you into a nice, safe cell. You're not the one Fraser really wants. Right, Fraser?"

"No," he murmured, in a voice that promised violence in the dark, "I'd prefer the man who ordered the hit. But I'll settle for the one who carried it out."

I had to swallow a little before I could talk. "See? He'll be satisfied with you in jail. So just give up the name, and we all make it out of here."

Drake looked confused, unsure. This was the point in the interrogation where I'd take a break, get some coffee, let the guy's own nerves break him down. Fraser had other plans.

He strode to the far edge of the room and came back with a gas can that sloshed as he walked. He moved in front of Drake.

"The ancient Persians cremated their dead," Fraser said as he unscrewed the cap. "That's well-established. However, some scholars have recently suggested that if one of their great heroes fell in battle, the Persians would burn a dozen captured enemy soldiers alive on his pyre."

Fraser poured the gasoline over Drake's head, careful not to splash any on himself. Drake choked and gasped as it slid down his face, onto his clothes. The smell of the gas filled the room. "This guaranteed that their hero would be granted the appropriate status in the after-life."

I was pretty sure that Fraser wouldn't really do it, but … fuck. My first partner was a big believer in using phonebooks to get confessions, but he had nothing on Fraser for hardball interrogation.

Fraser took a few steps back, tossed the empty can aside, and pulled out a lighter. "I think my father might appreciate an escort, don't you, Mr. Drake?" Fraser flicked the lighter, lighting up his cold, empty face.

"Gerard!" Drake screamed. "His name was Gerard. I met him in Toronto, and he paid me 40 grand to off the Mountie."

Fraser's eyes narrowed. "Gerard?" he said. "Was he a Mountie as well?"

"I don't know," Drake said. Fraser raised an eyebrow. "I don't fucking know! It's not like I make 'em fill out a resume!"

Fraser's lip curled. "There's more to being a professional than taking their money, you know."

I pulled out my notepad, asked questions, and wrote down all the details as Fraser paced around the room like a tiger at the zoo. Drake was very, very cooperative. None of it was admissible in court, but I'd know just what to ask once I got Drake back to an Interrogation Room. Finally I ran out of questions.

"Do you have everything you need, Ray?" Fraser asked.

I nodded.

"Excellent," he said, stepping behind Drake and pulling his gun.

"Fraser, stop," I yelled, and my gun was out, pointing at him.

Drake whispered, "You promised."

"It's my nature, said the scorpion," Fraser told Drake, which made no sense.

"I cannot let you shoot this guy, Fraser. You called me into this. You called me. And I get that he killed your dad, I get that, but he is my prisoner now, and I am gonna make sure he goes to jail for it. So you put that gun down, or I will shoot you dead."

Fraser was looking at me with a sunny little smile, his gun still aimed at Drake. "You do what you need to do, Ray."

I breathed out and focused in, finger on the trigger, ready to take the shot.

Fraser's gun hand trembled. Wait. That was wrong. The deadly calm man who had faced me down on a rooftop last week wouldn't do that. I suddenly remembered Fraser asking me if I could kill again, and my answer to him; that I could, to protect someone.

And then I knew why Fraser had called me in to watch him question Drake, instead of taking care of business himself. It wasn't to prove his innocence. And it wasn't to bring Drake into custody. Those were side benefits, sure.

But Fraser invited me here because I was a shooter. And then he threatened Drake, to give me the perfect excuse.

"Forget this," I told Fraser, and holstered my gun. "If your big plan is for me to shoot you, that's just dumb."

Fraser didn't say anything. He blinked at me with his mouth half-open, like I'd just colored his sky in with a green crayon and he wasn't sure what to do about it.

I walked around Drake, pushed aside Fraser's arm, still holding the gun, and gently hip-checked him out of the way so I could get to the duct tape. It was slick, covered in gasoline. "You gonna help, Fraser, or just stand there with your dick in your hands?"

"With my - oh, of course, Ray." And then he was there, with his handy knife, sawing away at the duct tape. I cuffed Drake and read him his rights. Then the two of us pretty much carried Drake down to my Chevy and put him in the back seat. I didn't even want to think about what the combination of gas and, I sniffed, yep, urine was going to do to the upholstery.

I closed the door on Drake, and tilted my head to invite Fraser back inside. We picked up his lantern, blew it out, and walked down the stairs. I talked a guy off a ledge once. I hoped I could do the same for Fraser. I sat down in the deep shadows at the bottom of the stairs, and he sat next to me.

"So what's next for you, Fraser?" I asked.

"Honestly, Ray, I've no idea. I rather thought I was done with making plans."

I listened to him breathing in the darkness; felt him pressed up against my shoulder. "You know, I asked Denny what he wanted to be doing when he was thirty. He didn't think he'd ever get there."

"He was right," Fraser said in a gruff voice.

"Yeah, I think that's the kind of prediction that pretty much always come true. So you need to come up with some kind of plan, Fraser. And if its to try this suicide-by-cop thing with somebody else, I'm gonna get jealous."

That startled a little huff of a laugh out of him.

"Were you serious about retiring?"

"I don't know. It's not that easy, Ray."

"It could be." I reached out in the dark and put my arm around his shoulders. "It's like … life gave you lemons, and you made lemonade, right?"

"Yes, I suppose I did."

"Right. And you drank your lemonade, Fraser. The whole pitcher, down to the last drop. So now you could go make some more lemonade. Or maybe, if you want, you could make yourself a nice pot of coffee instead. You see what I'm saying?"

"Yes, I…" Fraser slumped a little. "No, not really."

"I'm saying that your life sucked. Bad things happened. Your Mom, your family, Joe. Lots of bad things. But you did what you could, right? You took out some monsters that would have hurt a lot of people. There's a village down in Colombia that thinks you're their hero. Even Denny – he told me you saved him from something nasty. You did good. More than me, and I been a cop, I been trying. So now, I think you earned the right to walk away from the job, and the death, and all this cops and robbers bullshit. Just walk away from all that crap, and make a real life for yourself."

Fraser leaned in against me. He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. I moved my hand up from his shoulder to his head, gently brushed my fingers through his hair. God, he smelled good. "You deserve to be happy, Fraser."

We sat there for a while, until my ass got sore. "Come on. I gotta get Drake back to the precinct."

We walked out to the car together. I pulled out my keys, and Fraser pinned me up against the car from behind, arms on either side. "Ray," he said. I felt his nose move through the short hairs at the back of my neck. He sniffed, nuzzled, and then his lips brushed behind my ear. My skin was electric, alive with the heat of him pressed up against me. "You're my one man in a thousand, Ray."

I felt the cold as he stepped away. By the time I turned around, he was gone.

"See you around, Fraser," I called out to the night.

***********************

Drake sang like a bird as soon as I got him into an Interrogation Room back at the station. Only question he didn't answer was when the lieutenant stepped in to ask why he was covered in gasoline.

Driving home, I start feeling down. Real down. Maybe I'd just been working in the same precinct too long, because everywhere I looked in these neighborhoods, I saw a crime scene. I checked them off in my head as I drove past.

The bar where one guy stabbed the other guy. The alley where that waitress got raped. The corner where a little kid got caught in a drive-by. The bookstore where an armed robber assaulted the owner.

A bookstore. I pulled into a parking spot on the street.

'Hammond's Used and Rare Books.' I'd been in there six months ago. Mr. Hammond had gotten beat up, bad, for the $62 in his register. All I'd been able to do was take his statement, and let him ID the body of his attacker when the guy showed up as a John Doe in the morgue two days later from an overdose.

The sign on the door said, 'Closed', but the shop was still lit-up, so I knocked. Mr. Hammond came to the door. He was about sixty years old, tall and skinny, hair gone white, wearing an argyle sweater.

"Detective!" He said, opening the door. "What can I do for you?" He looked tired, but had a smile for me. I could still see where the bastard had broken his nose.

"Hi, Mr. Hammond. I, uh, I had a question, thought maybe you could help?"

"I'll certainly try. Come right in."

I stepped inside. Mr. Hammond ushered me into his shop, and then turned to lock up. I looked around the store. There was one little table for an old-fashioned register, with a comfy-looking chair next to it. Other than that, the place was packed with books, floor to ceiling. It even smelled like books, old and musty, but not in a bad way.

"Would you like some coffee?" Mr. Hammond asked.

"Nah. This shouldn't take long."

He settled down in his chair with a sigh and looked up at me.

I leaned back against the counter. "Okay. So. This guy, he said something to me. It sounded like a quote, maybe, and I hoped you could help me figure out where it's from."

"Is this for a case?" Mr. Hammond asked, perking right up.

I didn't even know anymore, so I shrugged.

"Well, what did he say?" I could tell Mr. Hammond was getting impatient.

"He said … he said I was his 'one man in a thousand.' That mean anything to you?"

Mr. Hammond sat back in his chair with a quiet, "Oh," and closed his eyes. When he opened them they were dark and wet.

"You okay, sir?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. The quote is … quite familiar to me. Just a moment."

He stood up and walked along one aisle, bent down slowly and pulled a small book from the shelf. He looked in the front, and then flipped to a particular page as he walked back to me. "Here," he said, holding it out.

I took the book and read what was on the page.

> ONE man in a thousand, Solomon says,  
> Will stick more close than a brother.  
> And it’s worth while seeking him half your days  
> If you find him before the other.  
> Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend  
> On what the world sees in you,  
> But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend  
> With the whole round world agin you.  
> 
> 
> His wrong’s your wrong, and his right’s your right,  
> In season or out of season.  
> Stand up and back it in all men’s sight—  
> With that for your only reason!  
> Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide  
> The shame or mocking or laughter,  
> But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side  
> To the gallows-foot—and after! [2](http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=4113)

I swallowed hard. "Could I … could I buy this book, please, Mr. Hammond?"

"Of course, Detective. That'll be five dollars."

I turned the book over. It was a pretty little thing, covered in red leather. Old, but in good shape. "You sure? It looks like it's worth more."

He looked at me sharply. "I think I know what to charge for my own books."

Yeah. Just like I know what to do with a criminal when I catch him. I handed over a five-dollar bill and took my book back to my darkened apartment.

The next day I was trying to finish Drake's arrest report. It was hard to concentrate. I kept opening my drawer to touch the little red book I'd tucked in there when I got to work that morning. I was just getting to the creative part of the report when a call came in.

"Kowalski, one of my men spotted Ben Fraser at that grave, just like you said," Sergeant Harahan told me. "You want in on the arrest, you'd better hustle. Sounds like we've got a high-speed chase on our hands."

I slammed the phone down, grabbed my coat off the back of the chair, and ran. I bullied Transportation into handing me the keys to a patrol car. I'd need the sirens and lights. In the car I put the radio on, and threw the car onto the roads. The sun was already sinking below the horizon, and I was running out of time. I navigated the traffic that didn't pull over by instinct and peripheral vision, all my attention focused on the radio.

Fraser was heading north, out of the city. He'd pulled onto I-83. State Patrol had picked up the pursuit. There were two choppers on him now. And I was gaining on him, almost there, but they'd set a trap, had him boxed in on the Kingery Highway Bridge.

I pulled up behind six state patrol vehicles blocking this side of the bridge, flashed my badge at a cop that wanted me to stop, and ran up the bridge. There was a man with a bullhorn bellowing something. Fraser was pinned by a chopper's spotlight at the highest point of the bridge, leaning on the railing.

"Fraser!" I yelled.

He turned, waved at me, and then jumped over the side. Without thinking, without letting myself think, I ran for the side and jumped off after him. I hadn't even looked, but as I was falling, I realized the water was further down than the 15-20 feet that we had for Chicago bridges.

I took a deep breath, held it, and the water smashed into me. It made me let go of my air, and when I tried to get a breath, cold water poured into my mouth, then I was, I was surrounded by it, and it was dark, and I couldn't tell which way was up. I tried kicking but it didn't help. Something grabbed me from behind, and I tried to hit it, but then I recognized Fraser's big, warm hand. I went limp and let him do his thing.

He dragged me out onto the shore, facedown. It was muddy, and rocky, and ow. Fraser was petting my hair. "Ray, oh god, Ray, not you too."

I pushed up onto my hands and knees and puked out some water. "I'm okay," I gasped.

Fraser stood up. "What the _hell_ were you thinking, jumping like that?" he said in a loud, angry whisper.

"You did," I choked out.

"Yes, but a) I was fleeing the police, and b) I can swim!"

"Couldn't let you get away," I told him, panting.

"Well you certainly deserve a medal then, jumping off a bridge to apprehend –"

"I came to stand by your side," I said.

Fraser sank down next to me, but it was too dark for me to see his face.

I coughed little bit. "Fraser, I want to make you a better offer. Okay?"

He didn't say anything, so I reached out a hand, found his wet shoulder, and pulled him down to me. My lips found his chin first, cold from the water, with a little prickle of stubble. I worked my way up to his lips, and then pulled him closer. And Fraser, he melted into me, hand in my hair, mouth warm and hungry on mine, just exactly what I needed, until I had to stop, cough, take a breath.

"That a yes?" I asked.

But his body was rigid now, and he said "ssssh", so quiet I could barely hear it. So I listened. There were voices in the woods, and flashlights coming towards us.

Fraser was looking back at me. "Ray," he whispered.

"Go," I whispered back. He didn't move, so I pushed against his chest. "We'll find a way, but you gotta go now, Frase, 'cause that whole prison romance thing? Not for me." A breath of a laugh drifted across my face, and then he was gone.

"See you around, Fraser," I whispered after him. Then I lay there, shivering on the cold ground, my nose and throat sore from the water, until the State Patrol found me.

When I got out of the hospital the next morning I contacted the Constable Brighton over at the Canadian Consulate. I told her I had a witness willing to testify that one of their Mounties had put out a contract on another one, and that they'd better get Gerard into custody ASAP.

She transferred me to her superior, and he had me call somebody in Canada, who passed me further up the chain of command. I ended up spending about five hours on hold, before they finally had me dictate a report to some girl in Toronto who sounded like I was keeping her from watching her soaps. I tried to follow up the next day, but apparently no cop work could possibly get done on Saturday. No one would take my calls. By Monday Gerard was dead.

I'm still not sure if that was just a generic red-tape fuck-up, or if somebody up there thought a dead dirty Mountie was better than a live, talking one.

*********************

The postcard came addressed to me at the station two weeks later. On the front there was a gorgeous beach with the sun setting over the water. On the back, there was a postmark from Chiapas, Mexico, and the message

 __

>  _Ray –  
>  If retiring to margaritas on the beach is your cup of tea, you might look for me here. I'll wait for a few days. I hope you'll join me.  
> – Ben_

  
Of course, I barely got to read the postcard. IA grilled me about it for a couple of hours while they contacted the Federales and sent every warm body they could to go looking for Ben Fraser in Chiapas.

Once IA was done with me, I asked the lieutenant if I could take a half-day. He grunted, which I took as a yes. I spent an hour at the library, made a few phone calls from the pay phone there, and then went home and packed a bag. I went to the bank and closed out my accounts, got out a few hundred in traveler's checks, the rest in cash, and pulled a driver's license from an old undercover job out of my safe deposit box. I dropped by a courier service, packaged up my badge and guns, and arranged for them to be delivered to my lieutenant late tomorrow afternoon.

I cruised around the city for an hour. Drove through my old neighborhood, passed Stella's new condo, down Lakeshore Drive, and parked by Chicago Stadium for a few minutes. My dad used to take me there to see the Blackhawks when I was little. The Bulls just played their final game at the stadium last week. It was scheduled to be demolished, piece-by-piece, over the next year.

I left my car at the far end of the long-term lot at the airport, with the keys in the ignition. Then I marched in and used my credit card to book a flight from Chicago to Tapachula International Airport in Chiapas, Mexico, with one stop in Mexico City. No luggage to check. Just my one carry-on. The flight wasn't boarding for 90 minutes, so I got some coffee and paced, waiting for some guy in a uniform or a suit to stop me. No one did.

Four and a half hours later I walked through Mexican customs in Mexico City, nothing to declare, just going on a little vacation. I went to the john, changed, shaved, combed my hair down flat, sprayed on a little tanner, cut Ray Kowalski's driver's license and credit cards up into bits and flushed them down the toilet. The rest of the wallet got tossed in the trash. Then Darren Hennessy walked straight to the Air Canada desk, showed his driver's license, and bought himself a one-way ticket to Inuvik, Canada with cash.

Because, sure, margaritas on the beach would be most guys' idea of a perfect retirement. But Fraser wasn't most guys. And I remembered the longing in his voice when he read poems about wild, snowy places. So instead of Chiapas, the southern-most tip of Mexico, I was headed as far north as I could get. Which meant Canada. Inuvik seemed like the best bet. According to the maps and travel guides in the library, that was above the Arctic Circle, as far north as you could get by road. So I'd fly there, and hope Fraser was waiting for me in Inuvik. If I didn't see Fraser within 24 hours of landing in Inuvik, I'd use what money I had left to try and charter a flight up to this tiny little place even further north, Tuk-something. And if Fraser wasn't there … I'd figure something out.

I had a little red leather book of poems to read during the flight.

Eighteen hours later, in Chicago, Lieutenant Renton opened a courier package containing Ray Kowalski's badge and gun. In Inuvik, the two men who had greeted each other on the tarmac with a kiss hot enough to melt the ice roads were already long gone.

>  _They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,  
>  They have soaked you in convention through and through;  
> They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --  
> But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.  
> Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;  
> Let us journey to a lonely land I know.  
> There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,  
> And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go._ [3](http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=4933)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Death-Defying [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3911377) by [podfic_lover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/podfic_lover/pseuds/podfic_lover)




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